If you have more ideas, great! Save them for another speech (or blog
post/article). Focus on the one idea you want to communicate to your
audience. You want to ensure your audience gets your idea. And you want
it to be as compelling as possible. If you’re writing on a technical
topic, make sure what you’re trying to get across focuses on that single
topic.

This is a problem I’ve struggled with in the past. I want to
communicate too many things. It’s hard enough to get one idea across. So
just focus on getting that one idea to your audience.

Make that idea clear

This should be obvious, but a lot of us miss this point. If you get
up there and talk or if you write and there’s no clarity, then your idea
doesn’t come across. That defeats the whole purpose of what you’re
striving to do. So you need to make sure that you get the idea across
clearly. In order to do that you must first be sure that you are clear
on what that idea is. If it’s not clear to you, it’s not going to be
clear to your audience.

When communicating that idea, use clear, plain language. Hiding
behind jargon runs counter to your purpose. We’ve all joked about
“buzzword bingo” and that’s something you want to avoid. Dr. Richard Feynman
was renowned not only for his expertise in physics, but also for his
ability to take complex topics and explain them in a way ordinary people
could understand. This is what is to be aimed for: the clear
communication of the idea. Remember your audience and choose your words
careful to reach them.

Organize what you have to say

It’s easy to just sit down and start writing. Grab a dictionary and
write one word. Flip a few pages and write another word. Flip a few more
and another. There, you’ve sat down and you’ve started writing, right?
Not at all. All you’ve done is copy a few words out of the dictionary
and they probably make no sense together.

You want to make sure that as you communicate your idea, that you
aren’t doing the same thing, only you are using phrases, sentences, and
paragraphs. Make sure your idea is developed in an orderly way. Ensure
the audience can follow along and that your building on your idea
throughout. Tangents and “rabbit trails” should be avoided. One of the
things I hate to see in writing is a sidebar that is only loosely
related to the topic being covered. Yes, I’ve been guilty of doing this
in my own writing and it makes me cringe when I see my own failings in
print. Stay on topic, ensure it’s organized, and work to develop your
idea logically.

Back it up

If you are working on an idea and not a topic like, “How do I change a
flat tire,” then you want to make sure that as you present the idea,
you give evidence supporting it. For instance, when I wrote an essay
back in the 9th grade against the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Force (INF)
Treaty, I did so having done an extensive amount of research. The INF
arsenal gave us punch even in a sudden invasion of West Germany without
having to launch ICBMs from US soil. It seemed really foolish to get rid
of this defensive measure. So I spent the paper discussing force
distribution in Europe, ranges and numbers of the weapon systems and the
situations where we would employ them, and the lack of anything similar
to provide equivalent capabilities. All of this went to support my
position that we should not sign the INF treaty.

You need to do the same sort of thing with your idea. As you develop
it, you need to provide facts and reasons why your idea is sound. You
need to give your audience reason to agree with your idea. Here you are
looking for credible, verifiable sources. Now those facts and reasons
don’t have to be as hard and fast as what I used in my position paper.
They could be stories and anecdotes. One of the things Al Gore tried to
use in his failed presidential campaign was anecdotal stories. Why was
this one of his strategies? Stories people can identify with are seen as
evidence for your idea. This strategy has worked in the past. And it
works now. We typically love good stories. Now what you use is up to
you. Make sure it fits the idea you’re trying to convey and the audience
you’re trying to reach. If you’re trying to defend a graduate
dissertation, stories won’t cut it. If you’re trying to talk to a bunch
of children, detailed facts with pie charts and other business type
notes won’t either.

Remember that these need to be verifiable. One of the things that
burned Gore was that as the media started to check into his stories,
they were able to find and prove that at least some of them were either
stretched greatly or flat-out made up. As a result, Gore’s strategy
backfired, especially as Bush found ways to convey his ideas to his
audience, the American people, better than his opponent.

You better be interested in your idea

I remember my senior year at The Citadel
I was given a presentation on research done by another physics major. I
did the best that I could and it was a worthy topic that I understood,
but I don’t feel that I did a very good job. Why not? Because it wasn’t
research I was interested in. I agreed to give it because my fellow
physics major had a conflict and couldn’t present the paper he had
worked on.

If you are interested and passionate about your idea, it will show. One of the things that characterizes the TED talks
is that the speakers are very passionate about their ideas. That’s what
makes most of the presentations compelling. If you aren’t interested in
your idea, folks will begin to sense it. And then they will ask, “If he
doesn’t care, why should I?” Then it doesn’t matter how good an idea
is, you’ve lost them. Be interested in it and find a way to convey that
interest. What about the idea appeals to you? What makes it special to
you? Bring that out.

Comments

Posted by John Sansom on 28 March 2011

Sounds advice, thanks for sharing!

Writing a blog post is often a process that is pursued as being more fluid than other forms of writing. This of course can make it easier for the author to go off course and steer away from the core theme without having actually realised it.

One method I like to use is to get an outside reader(someone not familiar with SQL Server for example) to review a post. This can sometimes prove to be a real eye opener.

Posted by Steve Jones on 28 March 2011

Excellent advice, and thanks for this. I give similar advice to authors, but I haven't done that for speakers. I'll be sure to point them here.